Joby Martin: What Happens When Pastors Finally Understand Grace

Joby Martin
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Joby Martin is the founder and lead pastor of The Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Florida. In addition to providing The Church of Eleven22 with vision and leadership, Joby is a national and international preacher and teacher. He is also an author whose latest book is, “Run Over by the Grace Train: How the Unstoppable Love of God Transforms Everything.”

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Transcript of Interview With Joby Martin

Joby Martin on The Stetzer ChurchLeaders Podcast.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Joby Martin on The Stetzer ChurchLeaders Podcast.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Ed Stetzer:
The Setzer Church’s podcast is part of the Church Leaders Podcast Network, which is dedicated to resourcing church leaders in order to help them face the complexities of ministry. Today, the Church Leaders Podcast Network supports pastors and ministry leaders by challenging assumptions, by providing insights and offering practical advice and solutions and steps that will help church leaders navigate the variety of cultures and contexts that we’re serving in. Learn more at Church leaders.com/podcast network.

Voice Over:
Welcome to the Stetzer Church Leaders podcast, conversations with today’s top ministry leaders to help you lead better every day. And now, here are your hosts, Ed Stetzer and Daniel Yang.

Daniel Yang:
Welcome to the Setzer Church Leaders Podcast, where we’re helping Christian leaders navigate and lead through the cultural issues of our day. My name is Daniel Yang, national director of Churches of Welcome at World Relief. And today we’re talking with Joby Martin. Joby is the founder and lead pastor of the church of 1122. In Jacksonville, Florida, and in addition to providing leadership and vision to the church. Of 1122, Jobi is a national and international preacher and teacher. He is also an author whose latest book is run over by the Grace train. How the Unstoppable Love of God Transforms Everything. If you enjoy our interviews, make sure you like and follow us on Apple Podcasts. Now let’s go to Ed Stetzer, editor in chief of Outreach Magazine and the dean of the Talbot School of Theology.

Ed Stetzer:
All right, Jobi super great to have you on the podcast, and you’ve written.

Ed Stetzer:
A couple of books, and your most recent one has to do with what we’ve heard kind of announced and shared run over by the Grace train. And I want to talk about the metaphor. I want to talk about all those things. But you say, I’m going to quote you that grace is one of the most important yet, quote unquote, misunderstood, misapplied and most abused concepts in Christianity. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. The question is, how has it been misunderstood, misapplied, and misused? Why do you say that?

Joby Martin:
Well, we hear the word grace a ton. We hear the old school definitions, which I think are really great, like Unmerited Favor and the acronym God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense. All very, very true. There’s this old Scottish proverb that I love. It says for every mile of road there’s two miles of ditch. And when it comes to grace, a lot of folks fall in one of two ditches. One could be, well, it doesn’t count for me because you don’t know how bad I am or what I’ve done. I’m beyond the grace of God. Well, that’s not true. And then the other ditch is. Well, I discovered first John one nine in my Bible, and now I can do whatever I want because I prayed a prayer at youth camp when I was 14. And Grace is going to cover it all. And neither of those is the grace that the Bible explains or that Jesus talks about.

Ed Stetzer:
Okay, so and of course, our audience is going to be pastors and church leaders. And that’s part of what and also part of your story, though, and run over by the Grace train, talk to us what it means to be you’re a pastor. As you began to walk through some of these truths, what was that like to discover?

Joby Martin:
Well, I was radically saved. I grew up in the South, so I would have thought that I was a Christian because I was southern and I believed in God like I do. I don’t know the Second Amendment and SEC football and Santa Claus. You know, we.

Ed Stetzer:
Couldn’t tell you grew up in the South, but that’s helpful to get that out early in case people.

Joby Martin:
Like me in heaven.

Ed Stetzer:
So that’s okay.

Joby Martin:
I think so. Uh, yeah. Man. And I went to this little camp and they reenacted the crucifixion of Christ. And this is way before Mel Gibson’s The Passion. And they did it. And my football coach led the camp. And watching this thing acted out somehow. I mean, now I have language that, you know, God wooed me and softened my heart and ripped my heart of stone out and gave me a heart of flesh. And and I believe that it counted for me. And, uh, and then I was still probably under the misunderstanding that grace was just like the entry door into Christianity. But then you better earn your keep. And then over time, through being sanctified, I began to learn that grace not only invites you to the relationship, but when you fall down, you fall on that same grace that saved you.

Ed Stetzer:
Yeah, I think I think for me, I think that pastors may ironically, be one of some of the people who least live in grace. Um, partly because they’re trying to maybe encourage and sometimes push along God’s people. And that feels like performative, performative, performative. They sometimes have to live that way. Performative. Performative. Performative. So when is it like you’re a pastor and a leader? When does grace come into that space?

Joby Martin:
Well, it’s so dangerous. I mean, right, like you’re trying to if you’re a good shepherd and you’re trying to lead people to to still waters and green pastures and you tell them God loves you no matter what, you’re really afraid they might do the whatever. What? Right. This whole book is the anti cheap grace book. I mean, the whole point of the book is if you say, well, because of grace, I can do whatever I want, then you’ve never actually experienced the grace of God because it it frees you from sin not to sin. It frees you from sin, like Billy Graham used to say, from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin, and one day from the presence of sin. And and where else in your life does the verdict come before the performance? It doesn’t come to church that way. Sure. Like a church didn’t just call you and say, hey, by Grace, we want you to be our pastor and we’re going to see how the preaching goes. You actually go preach in view of a call. Literally you perform and then they give a verdict. And with grace, it’s completely different. It’s because of the performance of Christ. I mean, one of my favorite things to share with pastors is Jesus’s baptism. And we know it. He goes into the water, the heavens open up. God the father speaks out loud and says, behold, my son, in whom I am well pleased. And he hasn’t done any ministry other than the incarnation. He hasn’t preached or done any miracles, died on the cross, or been resurrected. Right. And before he does it, God places his approval on his son. Mhm. That might be a really good passage for pastors to review every weekend before they stand on stage and teach the Bible. Like before you ever try to preach your sermon, and before anybody ever evaluates how you did that, maybe we could hear the voice of God by the grace of Jesus, say, you know what, buddy? I’m really proud of you. Behold my son or my daughter, in whom I am well pleased.

Ed Stetzer:
God is already has already accepted us. Use the famous Tim Keller quote I’m accepted, therefore I obey. And and I think one of the reasons that caught on people you know, every other religions I obey, therefore I’m accepted, is that we continually need to be reminded of that. And so much of the New Testament is reminding us of that. So which is fascinating how we get into that. And again, partly my own journey. I mean, performative, performative, performative. I love doing things. I remember planting a church. I need to have more people next week. I need to work harder. I need to make God happy by continuing to reach people. And sometimes it just burns you up. So how did you navigate some of those things?

Joby Martin:
Well, I mean, Dallas Willard has this brilliant quote about grace. He says, Grace isn’t anti effort, it’s anti earning. And when you realize that God has already placed his approval on you because you’re his son? Yeah. That you’re more than a conqueror. That should drive a grace driven effort to do all the things that he’s called us to do. And the reason that you can swing for the fences is because, you know, the results aren’t up to you. I mean, one of my favorite things in Matthew chapter 25, the parable of the talents, is that the five talent guy and the two talent guy get the same reward and the reward. The reward is well done, good and faithful servant. He does not say good and fruitful servant. So whether you’ve got a huge church or not, a huge church, that’s not the point, because the fruit is up to God. Right. The key is where we will be held accountable is where you. Were you faithful to steward what God has given to you for his glory? Mhm.

Ed Stetzer:
Okay. So you know, I actually teach pastors and church leaders to be more fruitful. Now what I say is I want you to be faithful and fruitful for sure. So how do you then engage in. I mean, you have practices at your church. You have processes at your church. You probably work with excellence at your church. So you’re trying to be fruitful, but you want to be faithful. How do you balance those out, and how do you keep your heart from being driven by fruitfulness, not faithfulness?

Joby Martin:
Man, one of the things I’m most stoked about at 1122 for we’re about 12 years old now and it’s going real good, is we’re still doing the same thing we started out doing when it was just a dream. Yeah, we worship our faces off, man.

Ed Stetzer:
I remember when you were just when you were ten years, 15 years younger.

Joby Martin:
I was 38 when we planted them. 51 now, you know, I have aged like a banana. And it’s because the church people. I didn’t have one gray hair before I started being a lead pastor. But that’s all we do. Man, we preach the gospel. We preach the text, we lift up Jesus.

Ed Stetzer:
But you’re still. I mean, you plan your worship to make it excellent. You’ve probably got an assimilation strategy. You got a small group strategy that’s focused on fruitfulness. And if you don’t have that, then faithfulness actually can also be hindered. So how do you think about I want you you focused on the faithfulness, but how do you also focus on the fruitfulness?

Joby Martin:
We’re doing that because we think that is what it means to be faithful. I mean, one of the prayers I pray and the prayers I pray and I share with our staff as I tell them, we should never expect God to bring us more people than we can disciple. So if we are not set up with seats and staff and prayers and systems to help people take next steps of obedience, that’s a good definition of discipleship. Discipleship is just saying, what’s my next step of obedience? If we’re not set up for that so that we can help the sheep get to still waters and green pastures, then why in the world would we expect God to bring more people for us if we can’t disciple those people? Because that’s what we’re supposed to be. We’re in the discipleship business, not the crowd business. If we were in the crowd business in Jacksonville, Florida, monster truck shows, that’s what you should get into. It draws the biggest crowds ever. But that’s not what we’re into. It comes once a year, and it’s fun for a minute. But we’re trying to make disciples that make disciples, to make disciples.

Ed Stetzer:
You actually go to those monster truck shows, don’t you?

Joby Martin:
Everybody in Jacksonville, it’s like a law. Well, what’s crazy in Jacksonville? It’s such a the same crowd at the TPC with like, loafers. The Players Championship the biggest golf tournament in the world.

Ed Stetzer:
Sports Reference. Yes, sir. I’m not big on sports ball. I know, I know.

Joby Martin:
But you’re smart. Okay. Try it. Uh. Same group. There is the same group at the Jaguars game. Is the same group at the Monster truck. Game is the same group at church. It’s all the same people. They just have different uniforms on.

Ed Stetzer:
All right. I did not know that. Yeah. Okay, so in the book, you talk about nine key lessons, by the way. Remind everyone the name of the book is run over by grace. The grace train, how the unstoppable love of God transforms everything. And you talk about nine key issues central to understanding God’s grace. I want you to list nine, but give me a couple that might help us understand it better.

Joby Martin:
Well, basically, chapters one and two are just to establish what grace is. We just go verse by verse through Ephesians two. In Romans chapter three, and I’m a verse by verse guy. And then the next bunch of chapters, we just look at where Jesus encountered people in the scriptures and how his grace changed everything. And then the last few chapters are really about how grace changes us, too. We talk about forgiveness. We talk about anger, and then we talk about the reinstatement of Peter and the idea behind the Grace train. The reason I started using this reference is, imagine you were late today and you came walking in the door and I said, where you been? And if you were to say to me, I just got hit by a freight train, I would look at you and go, I don’t think you did. Like your hair is all slicked, just perfect. Your glasses are just right. Your shirt’s still tucked in. You have all your teeth and eyeballs. You’re not bleeding. That’s true. The external evidence doesn’t look like you’ve encountered something that powerful. Okay. And yet, our churches are full of people that claim to have encountered something more exponentially more than a freight train. And their lives show no difference. Okay, so I’m just saying that when you meet Jesus, everything changes. See the woman at the well in Samaria? She meets Jesus. He digs down to the deepest parts of the darkest things that she was most ashamed of and trying to hide. Everything changes. She goes and tells the world every encounter that people have with Jesus when they taste it and see that the Lord is good, their life was different, not perfect. It’s progressive sanctification. And we don’t all check the sanctification boxes in the same order. But God changes us. And Spurgeon used to say, you know, the grace that doesn’t change you won’t save you.

Ed Stetzer:
That’s good, that’s good. Okay. So then, you know, remember our audience, pastors, church leaders, men and women, maybe on staff of churches or pastors or churches or key volunteers. What does it look like when a leader has been run over by the grace train? What’s different? I know like as a Christian, I know what some of what’s different. But is it different too, as a leader?

Joby Martin:
Yeah, I think, um, I think one of the biggest things is back to what we talked about before, that God has already placed his approval on you have.

Ed Stetzer:
To try to run around, be a people pleaser or a God pleaser.

Joby Martin:
So yeah, he’s I mean, he he sings over his children. He dances over his children. A.w. Tozer says the most important thing about you is what you think when you think about God. I think the second most important thing is what you think God thinks when he thinks about you. And most of us think even as pastors, maybe especially as pastors, that God’s a little frustrated with us because it’s not going as good as it could be going.

Ed Stetzer:
I would say that’s a regular expression I hear from pastors, and they don’t say quite that, but you can tell that’s in their hearts. Yeah.

Joby Martin:
And yet, um, in first John chapter four, the Bible tells us that this is love, not that we first love God, but God first loved us and sent His Son as the propitiation for our sin. Propitiation means a payment that satisfies the wrath of God, the justice of God. And so if you are in Christ, and he is the payment that satisfies, this means that God cannot be dissatisfied in you. He knew exactly what he was getting, not only when he saved you, and then he decided to draft you on his team to be a full time participant, to be a communicator of the gospel. And so the best thing that you could do is be the you that God created you to be as faithful as you can be, and then trust him with the results. It’s so hard to do good, and.

Ed Stetzer:
I think whole books have been written on people pleasing pastors. I know one book that I think that, you know, when you’re when when you’re doing it for an audience of one, it changes everything. I wonder, you know, we’re here in Dallas and, you know, I spoke yesterday. You’re speaking today at the Right Now conference. And if I hear one news story that begins with the phrase Dallas area pastor, I’m going to just throw throw something against the wall, a lot of, a lot of moral failures, things of that sort. And when you talk about grace, it’s like people respond to it. Well, you know, grace leads to licentiousness, and we’ve seen some of that. But I think maybe more of what we’ve seen is a is a lack of understanding. Grace causes people to act out in wrong and inappropriate ways. Does does grace and the grace train speak to how Christians excuse me, how pastors persevere or get knocked off track?

Joby Martin:
Yeah, I think one of the one of the biggest problems, when you don’t fully understand the grace of God is it will cause you to hide things in the dark and really gross things grow. So every pastor.

Ed Stetzer:
Gross things grow. Yeah. That’s why I like listening to you preach, bro. That’s that’s kind of like a southern expression, but I like it.

Joby Martin:
I just thought, like a normal person.

Ed Stetzer:
That’s true. That’s true. Well, normal person in your region of the country? Yes. There are different normal kinds of people.

Joby Martin:
They’re all moving to us. I promise you, I’m not.

Ed Stetzer:
Moving your way. I’ve seen the numbers.

Joby Martin:
I’ll meet em in the hallway.

Ed Stetzer:
For the record, a lot of people. But 30 million of them. But. But you’re. Every day you’re taking some of them.

Joby Martin:
I know, I know, we just got to teach them to not feed the seagulls.

Ed Stetzer:
You have to literally tell them. Don’t feed the seagulls.

Joby Martin:
Alright. But when you don’t understand the grace of God, I mean, it fundamentally is this if you don’t understand the grace of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and you screw up, you think, oh, don’t tell dad, right? But when you understand the gospel, you think, oh no, I’ve screwed up. I need to tell my dad. I gotta call my dad. You run to him, you don’t run from him. And essentially, what happened in these pastors lives that we all know. And what’s sad, man, is when this used to happen back in the day for me, 20 years ago, I didn’t know these people. Right. It might as well have been Elvis and Madonna. I didn’t know him now. Yeah, we know them all. We’ve been in these rooms, in these green rooms, at these kinds of conferences. And I think fundamentally, what begins to happen is somebody starts going down a road, a pastor, and the Spirit of God taps him on the shoulder and he’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. What are you doing? And the person, the pastor, the three most dangerous words anybody, especially a pastor can say is I got this. Mhm. And you ain’t got this. And the moment you shirk the spirit of God. Yeah. Everything else is just details. Yeah. Whether it’s money’s or honeys or whatever it is, it’s all just details from then on, little.

Ed Stetzer:
Little compromises without responding to the prompting spirit lead to bigger compromises lead to. Because again, I you know, I know some of these people. I don’t know that they they got up one day and said, I’m just going to fall into gross immorality. There’s no way. But there they go. And something along the way. And I don’t think it’s just grace. I think it has to do with accountability. But I do think it has to do with the soul itself. I remember asking Rick Warren once says, what do you think about accountability groups? I don’t want an accountability group. It says, why aren’t you accountability groups? Is everyone, every pastor I know who’s fallen was in an accountability group. It has to do what’s in the heart. And I don’t think that’s true. Not everyone. I have some people. I’m you know, I’m accountable to Eric Geiger, your friend. My friend. You know, we’re close friends, but but that being said, so much of it takes place in the darkness of the heart where grace doesn’t shine.

Joby Martin:
I’ve seen, uh, a few things that seem to be consistent in these guys that fall big. Um, one is they don’t have actual friends. Um, and if you haven’t been the butt of a joke lately and you’ve only been pastor, something’s wrong. Right? Like, if you walk in the room and everybody has to, like, perk up and people can’t make fun of you, there’s a problem. And if you’re only friends can be in other states where they don’t know you, that’s a problem, man. Uh, ministry does not have to be isolating and miserable. That’s good. Secondly, uh, you better have some local authority, right? I mean, I think Paul is pretty clear about local elders and a part of the reason. So we have local elders at our church because it’d be one thing, and I do think like a board of directors in another place that understand kind of some of the things that you and I go to that my local elders don’t, there can be really beneficial, but they never hear my tone of voice towards my wife. They only see me at conferences. You know how awesome I am at these conferences. We’re all the best version of me is going to be 30 minutes an hour from now up there.

Ed Stetzer:
I don’t want to hurt these pastor’s feelings, but those conference talks we’ve done, we’ve done them 15 other places as well.

Joby Martin:
You’ve heard this one many times. Um, and then and then this one is a lot of, I don’t know, this is definitely applicable to me in a lot of men. Pastors don’t have hobbies. Yeah. If your church is your hobby, bro, you were in big, big trouble. I’m just telling you. And so now if you’re married with children, you only get one hobby. So choose wisely. But you should find something healthy, or at least not unhealthy. That kind of steals your mind away. Um, whether it’s golf or surfing or something athletic or reading books or poetry, it doesn’t matter what the thing is. I love to hunt. I hunt so much. I’ve got a trip coming up Sunday. I’m counting down the sermons until I can get on a plane and go to South Dakota with a bunch of my buddies and go hunt. And when I am walking through the fields of South Dakota watching the dogs work, I am not thinking about church or church people. I’m thinking about Jesus a lot, and it just steals my mind.

Ed Stetzer:
To know that nobody listening to this was wondering if hunting was your hobby. Well, God knew. They all.

Joby Martin:
Knew. I’m hoping I’ll get some invitations. You Midwestern folks with the really big white where they are.

Ed Stetzer:
I don’t even know the big.

Joby Martin:
Whitetail live in South Texas just right in the middle of the country.

Ed Stetzer:
Are you ready for this? I went fishing and hunting the other day. Took my daughter fishing. Good for you. Didn’t kill nothing.

Joby Martin:
Well, no problem.

Ed Stetzer:
But I went down. Floated down the salmon River. Got some. I caught a fish. Anyway, I’m trying to be more outdoorsy. You probably don’t hear my problems, but anyway. Okay, so. So those things, there are patterns that are rooted in a lack of understanding of grace that probably right now, people who love Jesus have some areas in their lives right now where you see the Holy Spirit’s tapping them on the shoulder and they’re not listening. What’s the right response for a pastor right now who’s listening, who’s like, you know, I’ve been doing. I’ve been maybe moving some direction with small compromises. What would you say?

Joby Martin:
One thing I would find somebody trusted and tell them ASAP. I mean, man, I would say this thing out loud. Confess your sins to one another, that you would be healed. I mean, you know, we’re obviously Protestants, but sometimes you throw the baby out with the bathwater, and confessing our sins to one another was a is a tool that God gives us to help us.

Ed Stetzer:
Right there in the Bible, man.

Joby Martin:
Understand that Jesus has already cleansed our hearts. I love it. Um, I would get after that really, really quick. You know, something that’s interesting is the last chapter is about Peter being reinstated, right? He denies Jesus three times. Jesus resets the table. Basically same charcoal fire there on the same seashore where they met. Peter denied Jesus three times. And when Jesus reinstates Peter, he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t say, Simon, son of John, are you going to do better next time? Are you sure you’re going to try harder? This is going to be the last time we have this conversation, right? It’s not what he asked. He just says, do you love me? Mhm. I think that’s the fundamental question. Do you love Jesus? And if not, like if you’re like, well my heart is kind of shrinking towards him. I would get into some John 15 abide in him and he will abide in you. Do the things that stirred your affection for him. Maybe look at the letter to the church at Ephesus. Hey man, everything’s going great in your church. But have you lost your first love? Why don’t you go and do the things that you did at first? And they did all kind of crazy stuff. I mean, they were like burning books of incantation. They were cutting out the things in their life that were demonic, that were shrinking their heart for Jesus. And then they were pouring themselves wholeheartedly into the mission of God. Do those things.

Ed Stetzer:
Yeah. It seems that a lot of pastors, their love can grow cold. Maybe they’re so focused on the work of the Lord that they forgot to focus on the Lord of the work. Yeah, and I think grace kind of brings them back into that. So kind of, you know, when, when we look right now, I mean, there’s a lot of shaking going on in the church, a lot of shaking going on in the culture and more. You know, we’re doing a series of releases with Barna and Glue on the state of the church. Right. And in the midst of the state of the church, it’s it’s tentative in a lot of ways. And the state of the culture is tentative a lot of ways. So what would your hope be? Maybe last thought. What would your hope be for pastors? Again, I want to first encourage them to get run over by grace, by the grace train. How the unstoppable love of God transform everything. What would your hope for be for pastors and church leaders in regard to grace? To walk in grace and be leaders who are shaped by grace?

Joby Martin:
So back to John chapter 21. I think that the question Jesus asked and the response to Peter he gives are are linked for the pastor. Do you love me? And Peter’s like, yeah, Lord, you know that I love you. And so basically he says, be a pastor. Feed my sheep. Tend to my lambs. That’s the job of the shepherd. The danger that I see in the modern church. And you’re an expert on this stuff. I just pastored my church and I don’t know what’s going on, but the one one of the things that I see is that over and over and over, the Bible calls us shepherds. And our current situation, we got way more cowboys than we do shepherds. And I’m not anti cowboys. Cowboys are way cooler than shepherds. Anybody seen Yellowstone? Yeah. It’s awesome. All right. They ain’t making shepherd movies. Maybe the chosen, but not real Shepherd movies, right? Everybody wants to be a cowboy. I mean, look, right now, man, I’ve got on cowboy boots, cowboy pants, a cowboy shirt. I got a cowboy belt buckle, I guess. I don’t know, a cow.

Ed Stetzer:
That’s fair, that’s fair. So you’re basically cosplaying.

Joby Martin:
There are there are cowboy games that you can compete and see who the best cowboy is. Really?

Ed Stetzer:
Oh for sure. I don’t get out enough. Rodeos. Rodeos.

Joby Martin:
That’s what rodeos.

Ed Stetzer:
Are.

Joby Martin:
Rodeos are. They’re not. I mean, who knew? These people aren’t taking care of cows. Okay. Okay. All right. And cowboys love being a cowboy. Don’t love cows. When this thing that we do as pastors became, like a vocation that you could be famous at, there may be a lot of people that love love being in ministry more than they love ministering to people. They love, they love. They’re like cowboys. And we come to conferences like this and everybody is like the cowboy games, man. And everybody asks the wrong question. How many of you run it? And everybody lies. Everybody’s counting ears, not noses. And we’ve got to get back to tending sheep and doing what shepherds do. Loving sheep knowing their name, caring for them. And if your church is big, you better have a bunch of under-shepherds to make sure every single person is loved, cared for, fed, and led. And that’s a big question. Do you love Jesus and do you love sheep? Or do you just love being the shepherd? I think that’ll keep you in the game.

Ed Stetzer:
So, Martin, run over by the grace train. How the unstoppable love of God transforms everything. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Joby Martin:
My pleasure.

Daniel Yang:
We’ve been talking to Joby Martin. Be sure to check out his book, Run Over by the Grace train How the Unstoppable Love of God Transforms Everything. You can learn more about Joby at Joby martin.com. And thanks again for listening to this Church Leaders podcast. You can find more interviews, as well as other great content for ministry leaders at Church leaders.com/podcast. And again, if you found the conversation today helpful, I’d love for you to take a few moments to leave us a review, give us a like and a follow, and that will help other ministry leaders find us and benefit from our content. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Voice Over:
You’ve been listening to the Stetzer Church Leaders podcast for more great interviews as well as articles, videos, and free resources, visit our website at Church leaders.com. Thanks for listening.

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Key Questions for Joby Martin

-How has grace been misunderstood and misapplied in Christianity?

-What was it like for you as a pastor to learn what grace really is?

-How do you focus on fruitfulness as well as faithfulness at your church?

-What does it look like when a leader has been run over by the “grace train”? 

Key Quotes From Joby Martin

“When it comes to grace, a lot of folks fall in one of two ditches. One could be, ‘Well, it doesn’t count for me because you don’t know how bad I am or what I’ve done. I’m beyond the grace of God.’ Well, that’s not true.”

“[When I was first saved], I was still probably under the misunderstanding that grace was just like the entry door into Christianity, but then you better earn your keep. And then over time, through being sanctified, I began to learn that grace not only invites you to the relationship, but when you fall down, you fall in that same grace that saved you.”

“If you say, ‘Well, because of grace, I can do whatever I want,’ then you’ve never actually experienced the grace of God because it frees you from sin, not to sin.”

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Jessica Lea
Jessica is a content editor for ChurchLeaders.com and the producer of The Stetzer ChurchLeaders Podcast. She has always had a passion for the written word and has been writing professionally for the past five years. When Jessica isn't writing, she enjoys West Coast Swing dancing, reading, and spending time with her friends and family.

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